Reyahn was born in Guba, Azerbaijan on November 17, 2002, into an intellectual family. She excelled at school, far surpassing all of her classmates. Her greatest passions are math, physics and chemistry. Building on these, Reyhan became inspired to set up a company to make energy from rainwater, hoping to light up one house at a time through green energy.
Reyhan thought if wind could be used to generate energy, why not use rain. She is quoted saying that “rain has a huge potential if used properly”. The water tapped from rain is stored in water collectors and then transported to generate power that gets stored in batteries. The power thus generated is used to light up lights and is useful for small devices.
The initial prototype of Rainergy produces 22W of power and lights up to 22 LED lamps. The device consists of four main parts – a rain collector, water tank, electricity generator and battery. The rain collector fills the tank with rain water, which then goes through an electricity generator at high speed, creating electricity. The battery stores the energy and helps in lighting up houses in under-served communities.
Reyhan states that the model is much more efficient in comparison with similar systems and has the capability to store energy in the acumulator so that it may be used when there is no rainfall at all. Amazingly, Reyhan says that rain energy reduces CO2 emissions to 10g per KW/hour during the production of energy. This is very low compared to other current alternative energy solutions.
To promote her invention, Reyahn founded a company named Rainergy with the motto, “light up one house at a time”.
That same year, Reyhan became the youngest girl to attend the Global Entrepreneurship Summit in Hyderabad. The theme for that year’s annual conference was “Women First, Prosperity for All”. Reyhan was one of three entrepreneurs referred to by Ivanka Trump in her speech at the inaugural session, which helped her in looking for investors for her startup. At the Summit, she was also recognized as the youngest honoree, making the Forbes Under 30 list. Later in 2017, she won Honorable Mention at the Model UN Conference in Azerbaijan, and made it to the final state of competition at Climate Launchpad, Europe’s largest green business idea competition. Climate Launchpad also recognized her as the “Audience Favorite Startup.”
Thanks to her success at the summit, in 2017, she was able to continue her work in prototyping. In 2018, Rainergy won the Transform Fund from among 1500 proposals, securing funding from the Islamic Development Bank to continue prototyping and manufacturing. Again in 2019, Rainergy was part of many competitions and conventions, becoming one of the winners of the IsDB Engage competition and winning the gold in the Sabahin Alimleri competition which led to their display at the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair. Additionally, Reyhan was recognized with the Youth Award at the second annual TRT World Citizen Gala. Today, Rainergy is partnered with YTP, the Social Innovation Lab, and Azerbaijan’s government. Just this past January, Reyhan was selected as a 2020 Fellow of The Global Good Fund, and Rainergy was part of the 2020 EarthTech Challenge.
Reyhan’s invention of a device that will both provide energy and reduce damaging Co2 emissions, at such a young age, make her a truly Great Girl.